I read "Capitalism and Freedom" and "Free to Choose," and I had great respect for good ol' "Uncle Milt."
I did hear him say that he did not consider himself a conservative. I think he was more of a "libertarian," but you need to be careful with that label because it means different things to different people.
I know that Friedman favored legalization of drugs, but the problem is that if you legalize drugs you also need to hold people responsible for their own choices -- which means that you do NOT provide government subsidized "recovery" programs. So I'm sure Milton would say that you should not legalize drugs unless you also eliminate goverment-subsidized rehabilitation programs. So-called "liberals" (i.e., Leftists) would never go for that, of course.
Another thing I found interesting is that, if I am not mistaken, Friedman recently (i.e., in the past few years) came out in favor of government-subsidized catastrophic health insurance. That surprized me at first, but it makes sense. No, we're not talking here about a Hillary-style "cradle-to-grave" national health care program. We're only talking about *catastrophic* health insurance. The justification is that we essentially provide it already for uninsured people, so we might as well provide for everybody.
Anyway, I thought that was interesting. The question of where "catastrophic" coverage begins is certainly to be a difficult one to agree on, however.
The cost of the "recovery" programs are a minor issue compared to the "welfare" programs.